


Rearrangements

by orphan_account



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Biblical References, Discorporation (Good Omens), Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Historical, Historical Inaccuracy, Much silliness, Multi, Pre-Arrangement, Pre-Canon, Pre-Relationship, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-18
Updated: 2019-06-22
Packaged: 2020-05-14 07:39:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 9,457
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19268743
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: From the Garden to the Apocalypse, across the centuries, it's nice to have a familiar face to call home.Aziraphale and Crowley through the ages. Ft Bible stories, gross historical inaccuracy, discorporations and other such larks.





	1. Once Bitten

In the first few days of the Garden, there was an awful lot of learning for all involved. Plants learned that leaves were best off on top of the tree and facing the sky, not under the ground. Animals created after the fish soon figured out that huddling on one landmass was crowded, uncomfortable and inconvenient, so those that didn't feel inclined to swim learned how to fly and climb and burrow so as to spread themselves out a little. There was a lot of trial and error.

For a few brief, confusing hours, giraffes had to figure out that burrowing probably wasn't for them, and butterflies soon ruled out the prospect of becoming aquatic. The spiders successfully colonised a forest, turning the whole thing into a mass of cobwebs, but found their plans thwarted, as that was about the time when trees turned their roots underground and their leaves above it. Having found themselves under the ground quite unexpectedly, they tended to stick closer to the floor after that, huddling into little dark nooks and crannies. 

God has a Plan. It's just that a lot of it isn't very detailed yet. 

All of which is to say that the first few days in the Garden were positively Dali-esque until everyone had made themselves as comfortable as they could be, and it settled down into its natural state: Paradise. 

So far, Crawly was all in favour. Though the Fall had been a little while ago, in the grand scheme of things, Below was still for the most part a confused huddle of the Fallen, corralled into miserable, shuffling little groups. There was already a hierarchy emerging, a new order being created, and Crawly knew enough of himself to be well aware that since he wasn't interested in clawing his way to the top, there was only one another place to be. So when he was told to get up to Eden and make some trouble he hadn't stuck around to question, wasting no time in slithering his way through the undergrowth of Eden and having a bit of a look around. 

His favourite thing about it, so far, was the little patches of sunlight ripe for an opportunistic snake to bask in. Of God's myriad creations, the Sun was quickly becoming one of his favourites. Oh, it wasn't the most impressive star in the sky, not the biggest nor the most interesting, but it was certainly the most  _useful_. He spread himself out and flicked his tongue, tasting the air and listening to the sounds of Eden. 

After the initial chaos which had been met with tweets and trumpets and roars and yelps from more or less every living thing in the place, it had quietened down. The leaves were rustling in the wind, there was water lapping at rocks nearby, the occasional huff or grunt or snort of an animal. So far, Crawly had given those a wide birth - they didn't seem to look down when they walked, and he was in no mood to be stepped on. Aside from that, he could hear voices; the two humans had been instructed with naming the various animals in this place, and they'd taken to the job with sickening enthusiasm. Not that Crawly didn't appreciate their creativity. Upstairs, everything ended with - _el_ , and it was nice to hear some new syllables being bandied about. 

He hadn't yet got a good look at the humans, but given how much trouble they'd caused in their mere existence - an entire schism within God's perfect order, in fact - Crawly had the sneaking suspicion that if there was trouble to be made, it'd be somewhere around them. He tasted the air with his forked tongue, affording himself a few more moments in the sunlight before setting back off. Slithering took practice, it was true, and his first few hours in Eden had been spent flopping around in a rather undignified fashion until he'd got the hang of it. It turned out one could put on quite a turn of speed with a slither without even trying particularly hard. So he was making good progress towards the voices when he suddenly stopped short, finding himself impeded quite unexpectedly by a foot. 

The foot's owner was irritatingly unresponsive to another bout of hissing, which so far Crawly had found useful for deterring the other animals. He considered biting it briefly, before deciding against it. He  _wasn't_ venomous, but biting one of the humans might just attract the wrong sort of attention. After all, Lucifer had put forward that he might not be inferior to them, and look what had happened to him. Instead, Crawly flicked his tongue out against one toe and got a very gratifying yelp as the foot shot upwards, followed by a not-nearly-so-gratifying moment of terror as a flaming sword singed the grass next to his head. 

Oh. Not a human, then. 

He had one moment to look up at the face of the startled angel before he about-turned and slunk off, embracing the better part of valour. That angel was one of the Guardians of the gate, and Crawly wasn't in the mood to tangle with a soldier today. Not before he'd got his bearings, anyhow. It would be embarrassing to have to head back Downstairs to ask for a new body so soon after getting this one. Next time he approached the angel, better to do it on two legs. 

 

* * * * * 

 

Eden after the humans left was still Paradise. The Sun shone, the plants flourished, and Crawly enjoyed a few days of peace and quiet. The word on the wind was that the animals were all to be turfed out too now that the humans had gone and spoiled it for everybody, which seemed unfair to his mind, but that being the case he was going to stick around and enjoy it while he still could. Trouble accomplished, after all, he'd earned a bit of a rest. Commendations hadn't yet been invented, but he'd been assured that his contribution to the Hellish cause would be recognised. 

He had yet to decide whether or not that was a good thing. 

He dozed as he considered it, looped around the branches of a mighty tree which had decided on the fourth day that size  _was_ everything, and it was going to grow up as big as it possibly could. Towering above the leaves of the rest of the forest it was ideally placed to catch the sun and Crawly was quite happy to lie there and watch the world go by. His dozing was interrupted, however, by a polite cough from the forest floor, and a knock on the tree-trunk sending reverberations through his scales. He opened one slitted eye and looked down, opening the other one when he saw the angel - Aziraphale - with whom he'd conversed when the humans had been ushered out of Eden. 

He looked nervous, shuffling his feet and squinting up into the sunlight, so Crowley obligingly slid down the trunk of the tree to draw eye-level with him. 

"Yesss?" 

"Er. Crawly, isn't it?" 

Crawly inclined his head, thinking that that was a bit of a silly question. How many demons had the angel been conversing with in the last few days? 

"Right. Er. Awfully sorry about this, but I'm afraid I've been ordered to smite you." 

Crawly fixed the angel with a long stare and Aziraphale shuffled in place again, twisting his hands. 

"It's that business with the fruit, I'm afraid. They  _were_ warned, of course, first offence or not, but given the part that you plaid in the whole thing, the higher choirs have taken the view that it's better off all-round if you're not here. So. Um. Off you pop. Or I'll have to smite you."

Crawly considered this. He didn't doubt that the angel was capable of doing so - he had been put in place to guard the gates, after all. Never mind that Crowley's very presence was testament to the guardians' incompetence in that regard, somebody had at least trusted him to do so. And after the Fall, there wasn't an angel in Heaven who hadn't fought for all they were worth, and angels weren't made  _weak_. All the same, he looked uncomfortable with the prospect. Crawly couldn't tell whether he was reluctant to partake in smiting, or just - embarrassed by the whole conversation. He was acting like Crawly might obligingly dash himself against the ground to save the angel a bit of trouble. 

"How are you going to sssmite me without your sssword?" he asked - reasonably, he thought, under the circumstances. The angel coughed, cheeks darkening. 

"I'll have to, erm, improvise." 

That didn't sound promising. Crawly did his best to frown without eyebrows. 

"You don't ssseem very sssure." 

That seemed to touch a nerve. Aziraphale's spine snapped ram-rod straight and he glowered indignantly, folding his arms. 

"I'll not be lectured by the likes of  _you_ , serpent," he said hotly. Crawly tutted, unwinding himself a little to slide onto a convenient branch and find another patch of sun, squirming into place and settling comfortably while the angel continued to rant. "I have every confidence in my ability to do what's required of me. You're a troublemaker and you're not to be trusted, and since I highly doubt you're in any danger of mending your ways now, I'm afraid you'll just have to go." 

"Sssounds very reasonable," Crawly muttered, closing his eyes. 

"Yes. I think so." The angel was clearly warming up to his argument. "I was put here to guard the Garden from malevolent and insidious forces and I'm  _quite_ sure that you fall under that bracket." 

"You're too kind." 

"So you see, don't you. You've got to go. Evil must be smote where'er it rears its head." 

Crawly snorted. It was all very well, this rhetoric, but the fact that Aziraphale had to talk himself into it didn't bode well for the idea of him actually being able to follow-through. 

"Be a shame to kill the firssst thing you've had a decent conversation with, wouldn't it?" he asked lazily. 

"All you did was blaspheme." 

"Mm. Good, wasn't it?" 

"Look - Crawly - do be  _reasonable_. I'm afraid I simply don't have a choice. There's things to do, plans to be set in motion, and I'm afraid I simply can't have you around causing trouble." 

They were going in circles now. Crawly sighed, opening his eyes to ask what  _plans_ , exactly, and was just in time to see the rock that the angel had picked up heading at speed towards his skull. 

It wasn't so much that Crawly minded being discorporated. He just wished it could have been a little more dignified than a pudgy angel caving in his skull with a stone. 

Next time, he was approaching with two legs and a  _knife_. 

 

 


	2. Twice Shy: 2800 BC

Discorporations, when all was said and done, weren't all that much of a problem. Oh, requisitioning a body took a long time, was complicated, and was liable to get you chewed out by superiors (sometimes literally), but it was  _theoretically_ simple enough. The problem, at its core, was one of resources. 

Humans, having left the Garden, had been forced into tiny little mortal lives. They grew, they fought, they bred, they died, and their souls were ripe for collection, shuttled to Above or Below depending on their actions on Earth. So far, so good. But each soul from Earth, even generations down the line, held within it a scrap, a fragment, of the primordial fabric of the universe from which the first bodies had been made. A multitude of souls later and these tiny splinters of the divine were enough to weave together a fully-functioning, human-looking body. Perfect in every detail and ready to be inhabited by one very lucky demon, quite unlike the crumbling facsimiles that most demons had to make do with when they were forced to venture onto Earth. Those were strange and twisted, good for a few months, a year at most, before they fell apart at the seams and left the demon forced to possess somebody or return Below.

Crawly's body wasn't like that. As Hell's first - and so far, only - permanent field agent, rebranded as  _Crowley_ in recent years, he had his bespoke. Not without a fair amount of grumbling, mind, for wasting Infernal resources, but it had worked for him so far and he didn't intend to give it up without a fight. Luckily for him, fresh from his success in Eden, Hell had decided to indulge him for the time being. They were pleased with his work, and happy to let him carry on for the time being, at least until he put a foot wrong. After all, the more work Crowley did, the more souls they received, the better. Souls were a resource. Souls were power. 

That suited him just fine. He liked it on Earth. Alright, his day job was suffused with a certain amount of blood and fear and mess, and there was the ever-present threat of running into an angel, but the rest of it was  _fun_. Certainly more fun than sitting about Below and making grand plans for the end of the world, whenever that was going to be. It was a fast life on Earth, and Crowley liked it that way, and he was liking it more and more each day because humans, it turned out, were  _fascinating_. 

Let loose from Eden they'd swarmed across the Earth, forming little tribes, little factions, making and breaking alliances, starting wars,  _inventing_ things. Everything from better ways to kill one another in the form of new metals, sharper blades, more innovative weapons, to new clothes, new dyes, languages, games, buildings, laws, social structures. Their capacity for novelty was seemingly endless. That was what made them so easy to tempt. 

An ant, theoretically, is very easy to tempt into sin. See an ant plodding along its path back towards its colony, put a piece of fruit a little out of its way, watch its path diverted. It's a small temptation, but an easy one: hedonism. That was a demon's bread and butter - little incremental pieces of desire. However, any selfishness beyond the immediate satisfaction of a piece of food is wasted on an ant, not least because their next thought is to summon the rest of the colony to share in the feast. That big picture - the good of the colony, so intrinsically linked to their individual survival - makes them more or less un-temptable into self-interest. 

Humans, on the other hand, couldn't be easier to tempt. Short-term interests, desire and such, check. Better than that, they could think a few steps ahead, analyse cause and effect. That meant bigger schemes, larger plots, more intricate mechanisms requiring more people along the way to commit lots of little sins. Even better than that, they were apparently incapable of considering the bigger picture. Humans had exclusively short and medium-term interests, and everything beyond that was a mystery to them. It was  _marvellous_. 

So, for a millennia or so, Crowley rubbed along quite happily. He'd get his orders from Below - tempt this soul, tempt that soul - and he'd do his best to fulfil them. In order to best achieve his goal, though, most of his time was spent in learning. He learned their languages even though he could make himself understood anywhere, the little idioms and references that would make him far more able to convince them of anything. He learned their customs so as to flaunt them, their laws so as to break them, what made them tick, what drove them to despair or lust or wrath. He was the most hard-working demon in Hell, and happy to be. He liked his job, and he liked his life. He was so very nearly absolutely and wholly satisfied.

The only thorn in his side was the angel. 

It seemed every time that Crowley slunk into a town or a city or a camp with a person in mind, the angel was there to thwart him. And  _thwarting_ was exactly what he was after. Crowley knew that was the case, because Aziraphale kept  _saying_ it. "I must thwart your evildoing, demon". "I'm here to thwart you again, serpent". "Challenge me not lest ye be thwarted". It was exhausting. He did what he could in the way of sneaking around, but whilst Aziraphale appeared to be about as obtuse and dimwitted as a human from time to time, he had a remarkable ability to turn up in the nick of time, just when it would be most inconvenient. 

More often than not, it ended in a fight. 

This was just one of those times. It was a very familiar setting: two armies outside of a city, one attacking, one defending, both yelling blue murder at one another and charging forwards to do a bit of maiming. Crowley had showed up with the aim of ensuring that the defenders won. The attackers were planning on opening the city to merchants, increasing trade, building alliances across the land. Hell had decided that this seemed all a bit too amicable for their tastes and were set upon the defenders surviving the siege so as to continue their rather aggressive form of foreign policy. Predictably enough the angel was already there, floating above the battlefield invisible and unseen to human eyes, observing. 

It was tempting, sometimes, just to leave and see how the battle played out. After all, the armies were about evenly matched. Neither had a discernible advantage over the other, it would be so easy to flip a coin and hope that his luck played out and he might get his way without any intervention. But it wasn't a risk he was willing to take today. Hell had been quite clear.  _This city must not be overthrown, Crawly. This is of the utmost importance, Crawly. Failure will not be tolerated, Crawly._

Hell hadn't taken to his rebranding. He was doing his best to make it stick with some of the more amicable demons, but as the more amicable demons tended to be rather low on the pecking order, he wasn't having a huge amount of success. 

The angel looked down, spotted him, drew his sword. It wasn't flaming - clearly he'd had no luck reclaiming that one yet - but it looked worryingly sharp and pointy. Still. Crowley knew his duty. He sighed, fanned his wings and took to the skies as well, steeling himself for yet another gruelling fight. There was unlikely to be much in the way of preamble. They both knew why they were here. And they'd danced this little dance of theirs quite a few times before now. Aziraphale crushed him beneath his sandal, Crowley struck at his heel, and so on, and so forth. 

The angel had the advantage in terms of strength, there was no doubt about that - Crowley was sharply reminded of that as he took a wingtip to the nose and a sharp elbow to the stomach which left him winded, rolling in the air to dodge another attack and then dropping sharply a couple of feet to slice at the angel's hamstrings with his sword. Yes, he had strength on his side, not to mention that glare of holy energy that made Crowley sneeze at its weakest and made his head all but turn inside-out at full strength. But Crowley was swift and he was wily and he was a quick learner. Unfortunately, Aziraphale wasn't too slow on the uptake himself, and whilst he cried out as the sword cut into his leg, he surprised Crowley by reaching down to grab his wrist and throwing him down to the Earth. 

He landed in a cloud of dust, coughing, grimacing as he tried to sit up and felt at least two broken ribs grinding against one another. No time to waste feeling sorry for himself, though - the angel was descending fast, eyes narrowed, normally placid features gone hard and determined. Crowley hissed through his teeth and grabbed for his blade again, throwing it and grinning as it stuck in the angel's shoulder, knocking him off course and sending him careening off into the sand a little way off. 

He pressed his advantage, gritting his teeth through the pain and pinning the angel to the sand to punch him squarely in the jaw, only to be hit in the face by Aziraphale's wing again and buffeted to the side where he lay for a moment, panting. 

There was no doubt that these fights started off rather impressive from time to time, but more often than not ended in an undignified brawl. Crowley could taste blood in his mouth and his vision was tunnelling but Aziraphale wasn't looking much better, leaning to one side to avoid putting weight on his injured leg, one hand clamped over his shoulder where his tunic was dark with blood. 

"Foul....serpent..." he grunted as he limped closer, and Crowley rolled his eyes. 

"Do ssshut up, angel," he snapped breathlessly, waiting until the angel got just a little closer before striking fast, grabbing the handle of his blade and pulling it out sharply. Aziraphale clenched his teeth together and made an animal noise, extending his shaking hand palm-first. Crowley blessed, already cringing back from the glow of holy light, eyes watering at the glare of it. Impasse, for the time being. They circled one another warily, Crowley with one arm wrapped around his torso as if that might hold his ribs together, Aziraphale's curls stuck to his temple with sweat. 

"You won't succeed in your wicked plan this time," Aziraphale promised hoarsely, apparently immune to the idea of shutting up and fighting in silence to spare them both some pain. "I'll not let you favour these loathsome invaders. I'll defend this city to my last breath and thwart your wiles, just as I always do." 

"Oh, I'm sure you will," Crowley spat back. Since the angel clearly wasn't going to shut up, best take the breathing space while he could so he might have a decent chance of rallying. "Well, have fun watching your army return home with its tail between its legs, this city's already spoken for." 

"You insolent-" Aziraphale cut himself off, drawing up short and blinking at Crowley. Forced to choose between stopping as well or circling closer to the angel Crowley drew to a confused halt. "Er. When you say return home, you mean to...within the city walls, yes?" He looked at Crowley with an expression that was almost hopeful. It made him want to hit the angel square in his smug nose. He was bleeding and hot and irritated and in no mood to discuss semantics. 

" _What_? No. Back home to whatever other city they came from." 

"The invaders?" 

"Yes." 

"The ones attacking the city." 

"That's the ones." 

"The ones with the little horses on their flag-"

" _Yes_ , Azsssiraphale," Crowley snapped. "What  _about_ it?" 

"Er. It's just that I've - well - I've been told to make sure that they lose." 

Crowley narrowed his eyes at Aziraphale, trying to figure out where the trick was. This had to be a trick of some kind, surely. Granted, Aziraphale's features were smooth and guileless and he looked just as puzzled as Crowley felt, but last time Crowley had fallen for that trick he'd ended up with a spear in the kidney. Aziraphale was deceptively sneaky when he wanted to be. 

At least they seemed to have reached a ceasefire for the time being so Crowley sat down heavily on the sand, watching the angel do the same with evident relief as they set to doing what they could to heal their wounds. Neither of them, it turned out, were particularly good healers. Crowley blessed under his breath as he tried to make his ribs knit together, only to sneeze as Aziraphale kicked a cloud of sand into his face. 

"Language," he said primly when Crowley had cleared his eyes enough to glower, and that might almost have made him laugh had his ribs still not been so sore.  _Language_ indeed. 

"So let me get this clear. These lot," Crowley gestured over his shoulder at where the battle was still raging. Humans, apparently, had a lot more stamina for this sort of thing than either of they did. "are here battling over that city. You've been told to come here and make sure that the invading party lose." 

"That's right," Aziraphale nodded, tearing a strip from his tunic to tie up the wound on his leg. "Obviously." 

"Obviously?" 

"Well, of course. You know that their intent is to open the gates of the city wide to merchants from across the world. Their citizens will grow fat and indolent on rich spices and foreign luxuries, and become ever more focused upon money and material things. Their love of luxuries will cause them to reach further in their search for more exotic goods, and there will be wars as a result over land and over resources. Which is why _you_ ," he pointed an accusatory finger at Crowley, "are here to ensure that they succeed in their invasion."

Crowley wrinkled his nose. Nasty little minds those angels had, but he had to admit, it did sound convincing. 

"Not quite. I'm here to make sure that they lose too." 

Aziraphale tied the knot on his makeshift bandage and gave Crowley a doubtful look. "I don't suppose it's possible that you somehow misconstrued your-"

" _No,_ it isn't. I know exactly what my instructions were. Keep the city secluded and isolated, ensure that they don't reach out to foreign lands in friendship, keep them aggressive and afraid. The usual." 

"The usual," Aziraphale echoed, brow furrowed. "How odd." 

Crowley wasn't much inclined to comment. He folded in his wings and flopped on his back to wait for his ribs to heal, half-closing his eyes against the sun. After a moment Aziraphale did the same, leaving his wings out in a fashion that made Crowley grimace. He'd be picking sand out of his secondary feathers for weeks if he carried on that. Really, angels had no  _standards_. 

They lay there quietly, listening to the skirmish of the battlefield behind them, until Aziraphale shifted a little to squint at Crowley, lifting a wing to keep the sun out of his eyes. "You've got better, you know." 

"Mm?" 

"Your aim. A century ago that knife would have whizzed straight past my ear. You don't aim as much to the left as you used to." 

"Er." Crowley blinked once, deliberately. "Are you complimenting me on my  _technique_ , angel?" 

"Well, if you'd rather I didn't-"

"I'm not complaining, it just seems odd for you to compliment me on how good I am at injuring you." 

"It was just a passing comment. Don't let it go to your head. I'm sure that after we've cleared up this little misunderstanding I'll be able to thwart you just as I always do." 

" _Thwart_ ," Crowley mimicked, rolling his eyes. "Don't you get tired of saying that?"

"What would you prefer? Outmanoeuvre? Obstruct? Impede?" 

"Frankly any variety would be a welcome change." 

"I'll take that under consideration, demon," Aziraphale sighed. 

"Crowley." 

"What?" 

"It's Crowley. Honestly, I went to the trouble of remembering  _your_ name." 

"I honestly didn't think you'd care." 

"Why? Because demons don't do social niceties?" 

"Um. Yes." 

Crowley glared at Aziraphale for a moment and then relented, throwing an arm over his eyes. "Well, maybe. All the same." 

"I'll be sure to remember it for next time." 

There was another silence as they both considered a repeat of that fight the next time something came up. Another assassination that needed doing, a political plot, something that needed stealing. Aziraphale coughed again. 

"You know, er. Perhaps it mightn't be best to check with our superiors next time. To be sure that we all have our instructions correct." 

"For the last time, Aziraphale, I haven't got  _mixed up_. I know exactly what my orders were." 

"Yes, yes. Alright. I'm only saying that it seems a shame to, er...you know. Waste our efforts." 

Crowley considered this for a moment before sitting up, groaning at the pull on his ribs which, whilst now whole, were certainly not yet up to their previous standard. He was going to go to bed after this for at least a week. Lie down in some soft blankets with a jug or eight of wine and sleep this whole thing off. 

"What are you suggesting? A truce?" 

"Oh, no." Aziraphale looked almost endearingly earnest, sitting up as well and rubbing his shoulder. "No, I couldn't possibly form a truce with a creature of evil like yourself." 

"Right. Glad that's sorted out." 

"But I would consider a...temporary ceasefire. Whilst we establish what's going on." 

"Mmhm." 

Crowley turned his head to look at the battlefield. The dust-clouds were subsiding, and he couldn't hear the shrieks of horses anymore. Either an army was retreating, or all of the horses were dead - it amounted to the same thing, in the end. "It looks as if they're settling down." 

"Oh, yes? Who won?" Aziraphale asked, craning his neck to see. Crowley squinted, trying to see past the sand and the flurry of those last few humans still caught in the fray. 

"City." 

As the armies pulled apart they watched the horses with little flags on them - considerably more tattered than they had been previously - bunching together and disappearing towards the horizon. 

"Right. Well. Job well done, I suppose," Crowley said awkwardly, pulling himself upright and flaring his wings out for balance to make sure he didn't fall again. Aziraphale nodded slowly, still watching the disappearing army. "I'll be off, then."

"Jolly good," the angel said absently, reaching up to brush sand out of his curls. 

"I'll, er. See you at the next one."

"Right." The angel didn't look at him, still apparently lost in thought. Crowley shifted from foot to foot, brushing sand from his palms and staring at the angel for a second for - well, he wasn't sure for what. Some sort of acknowledgement, maybe. A theory, perhaps. Aziraphale was usually keen to defend Heaven to the hilt whenever Crowley felt like slinging a comment his way about them, and there were all sorts of explanation for this. Hell trying to confuse matters and spread misinformation, a long game, the Ineffable Plan. Any number of ways that Aziraphale could explain away this strange little circumstance. None came. 

"Right. Good. Fine."  Crowley took off. No point in pressing the matter, after all. Beneath him the sand was settling back, dunes stilling around the figure of the sitting angel, the desert calming after the brief excitement as if nothing had happened at all. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Got excited, wrote another one; more to come this weekend, I hope. Thank you very much everybody who left kudos or lovely comments, you're all gems. 
> 
> Find me on tumblr at ajcrawly


	3. Three Sheets to the Wind: 2600 BC

The directives of Heaven were changing. Aziraphale wasn't quite sure what to make of it.

Back in the Beginning, with only a few hundred souls on Earth with which to concern themselves, Aziraphale's instructions had been very clear. Make sure  _he_ isn't tempted by  _her_ , make sure that  _she_ gets to talk to  _him_ , make sure  _he_ gets nowhere near  _him_ \- and so on. But humans had taken  _go forth and multiply_ and run with it, and now operating on an individual basis was nigh impossible. 

Not that that stopped Heaven trying. Every once in a while somebody important would come along and Aziraphale would find himself being directed towards them, but otherwise his time on Earth (how long had it been now? Over a millennium - perhaps one and a half?) was becoming far more free. He wandered, mainly, place to place, and with Earth the size that it was, and humans spreading themselves determinedly over every corner of it, there was an awful lot to see. And he was becoming better at what one might describe as a generalised sort of  _goodness_. Thwarting sin where he found it, coaxing souls back onto the right path, and so on. There were simply too many of them to try tailoring an individual approach, so one had to be a little more pragmatic about these things. Heaven more or less left him to it, with a few exceptions, and Aziraphale's care of the humans had become somewhat nomadic as he tried to spread his efforts evenly amongst them.

It didn't much help that their lives were growing shorter. Adam had lived nearly a millennium after his time in the Garden. Nowadays humans were lucky to reach more than a few hundred. In the direct line of Adam things were different, the vitality of the Garden perhaps pushed down through the generations - Lamech had just passed, seven hundred and seventy seven years old, son of Methuselah who was son of Enoch who was son of Jared, the great-great-great-great-grandson of Adam and Eve. Adam's line was a long-lived little tribe of white-bearded old men and women with a spring in their step that seemed almost unnatural, a light in their eyes that was...unsettling. All humans, of course, held Knowledge of Good and Evil now. Thanks to Adam and Eve, it was their birthright. But sometimes Aziraphale wondered just what other knowledge might have been within that fruit to give Adam's descendants that somewhat haunted look in their eyes. 

Away from the line of Adam, things were settling into a rhythm of forty years or so for a generation, and as Adam's line became diluted, and whatever remnants of the Garden's power faded, Aziraphale expected that the same would happen to them too. Who knew how many humans they'd end up with, at that rate? Short-lived and numerous, living out a gnat's life upon the Earth. It was hard to pull strings of any Plan that might involve so many tiny lives, but that was what the Earth was for, so he had been told, and he believed it with absolute certainty. 

Belief is the purview of an angel. In the higher choirs angels sing out  _Alleluia_ and believe with a fervency that keeps the celestial spheres spinning. Aziraphale believed enough to lend his steps purpose and to know that God was with him - how else, after all, could he wave his hand and mould reality to his touch, altering molecules with a thought should it please him to do so. With power such as that, with his duty of care over the creatures of the Earth, the Plan seemed inevitable. 

And if a certain serpent might not think as much, well, he'd Fallen. The rewards of Doubt didn't seem to be worth coveting, even if Aziraphale had been inclined to do so. 

As it was, at that very moment in time, Aziraphale was without a direct charge. Wars were still ongoing across the world as ever, particularly in fertile regions criss-crossed by rivers. In a region that was called Beth Nahrain, wars had been seething for a few centuries now and showed as yet no times of stopping. He had just come out of Egypt where Sneferu had taken up the throne as Pharaoh and was busily instructing the construction of huge structures across the desert on the Giza plateau. Far further east of both Egypt and Beth Nahrain, a group of people were busily constructing cities tales of which Aziraphale had already heard; huge and built all of bricks, constructed such that flood-waters and waste would drain harmlessly away to outside of the walls, large chambers and baths and a central marketplace. Aziraphale was going there next to investigate. The ingenuity of humans was curious, fascinating even, but they were so  _quick_. It was easy to get lost behind them sometimes, to miss a decade or two and lose track of who was in charge, of what festivals were now celebrated and which had now fallen by the wayside. Keeping up was a full-time occupation which encouraged Aziraphale's constant travel and kept him on the move. 

Even on his travels, though, it didn't do to be idle, so he'd found the nearest village with a view to doing some good. Opportunities to coax humans from Sin were always there, if one cared to look, and Aziraphale was quick to reward generosity and piety where he saw it with a blessing, a breath of good luck that might brighten a pious widow's day and warm her soul, a little piece of charity here or there, a spare coin, a meal. Of course, humans were not always so easily turned, and sometimes humans had to be dissuaded from what would ail them. He crouched by a drunkard in the gutter, careful to keep the edge of his robe from a nearby puddle, pressing two fingers gently to the man's temple and curling his lip at the sheen of sweat left against his fingertips. What a mess. The man would wake with a blinding headache that far outweighed the (admittedly considerable) amount that he'd drunk. If that wouldn't keep him from disgracing himself as he slept, perhaps worse luck would befall him next time. 

It wasn't that Aziraphale enjoyed this part of his work, so much as that he understood that  _Goodness_ is not the same thing as  _Niceness_. If suffering turned a soul towards the Light, then it was for the best. For their own good. 

The building against which the drunk man had slumped had its door half-open; Aziraphale could hear the clatter of bone pieces denoting some manner of gambling within, the too-loud laughter of drunken men. It was as good a place to start as any, and his sandalled feet were dusty and hot, and perhaps some water would refresh him. He didn't need to drink, of course, nor to eat, nor to sleep, but water was the most basic of courtesies a host could offer their guest, and it would be rude to refuse it, so he'd become accustomed to the sensation of drinking, of cool liquid soothing away the heat and the sand and the dust and offering relief. 

It was dark within the building, and blessedly cool for it. Aziraphale blinked until his eyes adjusted to the light, picking out silhouettes of men and women crouched over their clay cups, letting his ears adjust to the buzz of low conversation and sudden waves of laughter, picking out the dialect and letting his tongue settle into the right place in his mouth. It wouldn't do to appear too much of a stranger. The body he was in blended in well-enough; small, dark, black curls tumbling into his brown eyes whenever the wind blew. The only advantage of discorporation was having one's body tailored to one's circumstances: what was inconspicuous up in the northern regions, all rain and frost and snow, wasn't so down here in the heat. Oh, Aziraphale could blend in however he chose if he had to, but it was an  _effort_ to keep his molecules in one place, and far easier to inhabit the body and let it do what it knew best how to do. 

He murmured a soft greeting to the woman serving drinks, taking a seat and graciously accepting the cup of water he was brought. A group of men in the corner laughed again and Aziraphale turned to look at them. They were well into their cups by the looks of things, engaged in a game of one sort or another. There were little piles of coins on their table and one of the men, one elbow on the table and cheek against his hand, flicked a coin to one of his companions. The recipient reached up lazily to catch it and missed first time, twisting around to snatch it from the air before it hit the floor, and as he did so Aziraphale caught a quick glimpse of yellow eyes, all but luminous in the darkness. 

His spine stiffened as their gazes met, finding himself holding his breath (weren't bodies  _strange_ to do such things, withhold life-giving breath when they were most afraid of dying?) as Crowley watched him right back. It didn't matter that the face was a different one from the last one he'd seen - what mischief had Crowley gotten into since they'd last met? - the eyes were the same. And had they not been, the body-language would have given it away too, extravagant gesticulations tempered by deliberate, artful placing of the body. Crowley moved with a swagger that made him appear insouciant, casual, but Aziraphale knew better. Crowley could saunter over a tight-rope, if he wanted to. Neither moved for a moment or two and then Crowley stood, throwing a comment back over his shoulder to the group he was with and carrying his cup with him as he made his way - somewhat unsteadily - over to Aziraphale's table. 

"Fancy ssseeing you here," he remarked, the whole sentence half-hissed. His slitted pupils were a little larger than normal to account for the darkness; one could be forgiven for thinking his eyes human, if rather strangely-coloured, and angels had better vision than humans. Perhaps he tended towards the dark places so as to remain unseen. Aziraphale sat in place, too startled to react when the demon sat down opposite him and put down his cup. Some of the liquid sloshed over the side and onto the table - wine, dark against the wood - and Crowley tutted. "What brings you to this den of iniquity?" 

"The same thing that brings me anywhere, as well you know. What poor souls are you tempting there?" 

"Mm?" Crowley looked back at them, already engaged in another round of the game and apparently having forgotten their strange companion already. "I've tempted them no further than they would have tempted themselves. I was just enjoying sssome company."

Aziraphale didn't look convinced. Crowley picked up his cup to take a long drink and Aziraphale caught a glimpse of a forked tongue. He pursed his lips. That was an indulgence, surely. It seemed unlikely that Crowley's superiors mightn't be able to create bodies as natural as Aziraphale's. Yet the eyes had been there since the Garden, that strange and startling yellow, and perhaps the hiss and the tongue went with them. 

"I see. And I take it your companions don't mind sharing their table with something of your kind?" 

Crowley regarded Aziraphale as he put his cup down, running a finger around the rim of it absently. "That'sss a rather rude thing to say. And how would they know, anyway?" 

"For one thing, you're hissing." 

There was a brief silence during which it looked as if Crowley was going to fire back some manner of retort, but after a moment he sat back, folding his arms and giving the angel an unimpressed look. 

" _Thanks_ ," he said tartly, any sibilance kept short, clipped to the roof his mouth. "Your tutelage in the ways of appearing normal is much appreciated. Right now, you seem more abnormal than I will." 

"How so?" 

"For one thing, you haven't got a drink." 

Aziraphale frowned, looking down at his own cup and back at Crowley again. "I do." 

"Not  _water_ ," Crowley huffed out an exasperated breath, rolling his eyes. "A  _real_ drink. The things that these humans do with their fruits of the vine; really, it's quite extraordinary." He pushed his cup towards Aziraphale and motioned to one of the serving girls for another jug of wine, ignoring Aziraphale's obvious discomfort. He struggled for the right words to say, under these circumstances, but since to fight in a place like this would draw undue attention, and to leave would feel rather too much like a retreat, he settled for staying where he was until he could figure out how best to deal with this. 

"Thank you, but I've seen what effect drinks such as those has on humans, and I've no desire to share in their indignities. You seem quite undone by it yourself, as it is." 

"Undone?" Crowley repeated indignantly. "I'm just as lucid as you are." The surety of his tone was rather undone by how half of the wine he was pouring from the jug seemed to be ending up on the table. Aziraphale made an exasperated noise and took the jug from Crowley, making a quick, irritable gesture to clean the table and fill their cups all at once. Nobody was watching, and there was something uncomfortable about seeing his supposed enemy so very casual about chatting to him. It put him on edge. 

"You're drunk. It's beneath your dignity," he snapped, setting the jug down a little too hard. 

"I who must crawl on my belly and eat dust for all the days of my life?"

"Even so." 

"You don't know what you're missing." Crowley was staring into his cup as if he'd never seen its contents before, that forked tongue flickering out from between his lips to taste the air. "This is the good stuff, too. Not quite  _Shedeh_ as they have in Egypt, but it's good. The men who sell this seal the jars with resin from trees to make it keep, and carry it as carefully as they carry their children. It's an insult to their labour not to at least try it." 

"I won't be tempted by the likes of you, you...you old  _serpent_." Somehow the usual script about thwarting and demonic wiles and so on felt silly now that Aziraphale wasn't holding a sword and facing an imminent discorporation. Judging by the amused look in Crowley's eyes he thought so too, and the crooked little half-smile on the demon's face made Aziraphale's skin crawl. He couldn't stand feeling as if he was being toyed with. 

The first time he and Crowley had spoken, outside of the Garden, the demon's easy way of slipping words beneath his defences and making him doubt had been a cause for embarrassment for years afterwards. It had taken a while to soothe away that doubt, construct his defences again, reconcile himself to the fact that temptation was Crowley's business and even he, an angel, might not be immune to it, no matter how unshakeable his faith. Even now he couldn't tell whether he was being tempted to drink or tempted to Wrath, because the more Crowley kept grinning at him, the more he wanted to punch him in the jaw. Eventually, for want of any response and in the hope that it would satisfy Crowley and make him leave, he reached for his cup and drank. 

Much to his irritation, it was surprisingly palatable. Smooth on the tongue, not quite sweet and not quite bitter, and after a few seconds Aziraphale could have sworn he felt it warming him. He put his cup down, now empty, and watched as Crowley followed suit. 

"There. Are you satisfied? Will you leave me be?" 

"Leave you?" Crowley looked genuinely surprised, focusing his eyes on Aziraphale and leaning forwards a little. "We're not in conflict here, are we? I'm here for a drink, and unless there's a prince hiding away in one of the rooms here I can't imagine you're here for anything other than a rest. There's no evil to thwart here. Come now, you were civil enough in the Garden-"

"That is  _not_ the point. In the Garden it was...er...things were different." 

Crowley watched him, unblinking. "Why?" 

Annoyed that he couldn't figure out a cogent response to that, Aziraphale refilled his cup for want of something better to do, to buy himself a few spare seconds. Why he was wasting his time on this conversation was beyond him, but Crowley seemed so curious, so  _unafraid_. Surely this innocent facade was a play for some temptation or another, he was a quick and wily enemy, Aziraphale knew this, but somehow it seemed rude to rebuff him when he was just talking. For the life of him, he couldn't figure out the right thing to do. 

"You and I are set against one another in all things. You sow the seeds of evil, and I thwart it where I find it. Our antagonism has been well-established, it oughtn't be a surprise to you. Last time we met, you slit my throat." 

"And the time before that, you crushed my ribs and watched me choke on blood," Crowley replied, seeming oddly unconcerned about that. "Such is our lot. I understand that. But tonight, you and I have no reason to be at one another's throats. Humans are decent enough company, they're entertaining, they're funny and they're clever, but they can't talk about things that  _matter_. They have no concept of anything outside of their own brief lives."

"Could one expect them to?" 

Crowley shrugged, suddenly morose. "It hardly matters. They're...look, they just don't understand. It's nice to talk, sometimes, to people that do." 

Aziraphale took a sip of wine - it was strangely moreish, and stranger still it only seemed to get nicer the more of it he drank - and considered this. "Don't you have others of your...sort? You must communicate with them?" 

Crowley wrinkled his nose, fiddling with something around his neck. Aziraphale looked closer to see a necklace of dark blue beads upon which were hung fine-wrought gold charms in the shape of leaves. It must have cost a fortune, fine work like that. Given that the rest of Crowley's outfit was reasonably plain - dark robes, dark sandals - he wondered what use a demon might have for something like that, other than perhaps as a bribe. 

"Do you," Crowley said eventually, "spend much time  _communicating_ with your fellow choristers? Do you find them to be fitting and enjoyable company?" 

Aziraphale opened his mouth and then closed it again. Crowley had a point. The other angels were respectful, of course, even complimentary of Aziraphale's work upon the Earth. Such a strange job, they said, and how hard to be separated from Heaven, to be cast down in the dirt and away from the Light. They were faultlessly courteous, but they became more distant year by year. Aziraphale worried, sometimes, that the more time he spent down here, the less they regarded him as one of their own. 

"Not so much as perhaps I should," he said eventually, cautiously, and Crowley nodded as if that was precisely what he'd expected to hear. 

"Therein lies your answer, O Angel of the Eastern Gate. Matters on Earth are best left to those that understand them, and right now that's the humans, and that's  _us_." 

Aziraphale was distinctly uncomfortable with being grouped with Crowley in so familiar a fashion. He swallowed back his discomfort along with his wine and then frowned. 

"Hang on. Matters on Earth if left to humanity's own devices would...they would...well, just look at what they've  _done_ to the place. Barely two millennia from when they began and there've been countless Wars, death and destruction. I'm sure Hell is already fit half to burst and they show no sign of stopping. They're multiplying. It's all getting  _worse_. Surely they need guidance from those that know better." 

"Do  _you_ know better?" 

"I know what is  _right_ ," Aziraphale said firmly, feeling rather proud of himself for having settled on that point. Crowley shrugged as if to concede the point, refilling both of their cups and then giving Aziraphale a sly look out of the corner of his eyes. 

"Ssince you mention War-" he was hissing again, almost as if he couldn't help it, and he looked positively gleeful behind the thin facade of nonchalance "I hear she's running around with a flaming sword." 

Aziraphale's cheeks flamed red and he felt that urge to thump Crowley in the jaw again. Surely that had to be distinctly un-angelic, but it would be so terribly satisfying. "Oh?" he asked coolly, grip tightening a little on the cup he was holding. When had that made its way to his hand again? Was the alcohol within it making it evaporate? Its level seemed to be drawing lower by the second. Perhaps he was mistaken - it was hard to say. His head felt fuzzy. "Is that so?" 

"Mmm. Oh, yes. Flames like anything, I've always said." 

"I  _hardly_ think-"

"It just occurs to me," Crowley leaned forwards, pressing a finger onto the table between them, "that were it not for your knowledge of what is  _right_ , perhaps she'd be significantly less armed than she is today." 

Aziraphale felt a sickening drop in his stomach - guilt being particularly discomfiting for a being that was not supposed to have free will with which to transgress - and turned his face away from Crowley's suddenly-piercing gaze. 

"I'm sure she'd have found a weapon that pleased her, with or without my intervention." 

"Perhapsss," Crowley shrugged. 

"I don't remember you being critical at the time. You were quite...decent about it, back then." Not a comfortable admission either, but at the time, Aziraphale had been relieved to be consoled, even by a demon. Crowley let out a little breath, a sigh, and settled back into his seat, closing his eyes to drain his cup. Aziraphale felt himself draw a breath now that his chest no longer felt pinned by the demon's scrutiny. 

"Never mind, angel," the demon murmured, leaning forward to peer into the jug of wine and grimacing. "Never mind. Have a drink. Look after the souls of your charges if it pleases you to do so, but I can't help but think that they...they are best placed to explore and create and decide for themselves."

"They're children," Aziraphale shook his head. "Children can't be allowed to run wild. Look at what happened in Eden." 

"Quite." 

"They can't...if they don't have...if they're not  _guided_ , they might get into all sorts of trouble. It's...it's-"

"Now  _you're_ hissing!" Crowley said gleefully, pointing an accusatory finger at Aziraphale. 

"I'm not!" 

"You are, I heard you. Don't deny it. Lying is a sin." 

"I'm not lying."

"No?"

"No. Sitting." 

Crowley stared at Aziraphale blankly for a moment before his face split into a grin and he laughed - put his head back and  _laughed_ , pouring the last of the wine into both of their cups. 

"Humour, angel, is best left to those that understand it," he said with mock-sternness, but smiled as he spoke, slipping some coins from a pouch at his waist to put them on the table. "And perhaps those that are sober. Come on." 

"Mm? Where are we going?" Aziraphale blinked up at Crowley who was watching him, amused. 

" _I_ am going to Egypt. Never you mind why. You ought to go to bed." 

"I don't sleep." 

"Then you ought to sober up." 

"Why?" 

Crowley opened his mouth to reply and then closed it again, smirking instead and patting Aziraphale's shoulder in a rather too familiar fashion. "Never mind. You'll find out. Charming time, Aziraphale - safe travels. Until next time we find ourselves opposed." 

"Er. Yes. Jolly good." Aziraphale watched, bemused, as Crowley made his way out of the bar with sudden steadiness, apparently no longer feeling the effects of the wine. That seemed a waste, rather, since the angel was rather enjoying himself. He settled into order another jug, wondering just why the demon had been so keen on soliciting his company. Various options eluded him, though, and the wine was a perfectly good distraction for the evening. 

The next morning found Aziraphale dry-mouthed and miserable. His head was splitting as if his skull had been cracked, and he knew precisely what that felt like; Crowley had felt the need, a few centuries back, to return the favour of being discorporated via a rock to the head. His stomach rolled as he forced himself to stand, aware that he could hardly sit here in the dark all day. He had a long road ahead of him to where he was going, even if all he wanted to do was curl up in a corner and wait for the sickness to pass. 

The light burned his eyes and made him squint as he stepped outside, stumbling to an alleyway and finding himself helpless to do anything other than empty his stomach in a noisy and less than dignified fashion. As he straightened, wiping his mouth and swearing to himself not to risk drinking again - at least, not without ridding his body of the toxin in good time - he caught sight of the same drunkard from the previous day, curled against the wall and groaning to himself. 

Aziraphale eyed him for a moment, conflicted, and finally bent down. Perhaps, just this once, mercy wouldn't go amiss. He touched his temple, clearing the drunkard's hangover and waving aside his bleary-eyed questioning as he passed him, heading off to the road to Beth Nahrain. With any luck, he'd not run into an archangel on the way; hungover and humiliated was no state in which to encounter one's superiors. 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All comments appreciated, and thanks to those that have left them so far!
> 
> Find me on tumblr at ajcrawly.

**Author's Note:**

> Whilst I like the TV-canon that Aziraphale and Crowley have never been discorporated, I've always preferred the view that they were discorporated about fifteen times a day by tripping, eating the wrong thing, forgetting to breathe, drinking themselves to death accidentally, getting caught in wars, being mugged and so on.
> 
> All comments and critiques welcome!
> 
> Find me on tumblr at ajcrawly


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